Koger Race Report

Auburndale Speedway, June 22

by Trish Koger

"What ever happened to qualifying for a race?" Rick Koger was quoted as saying after the conclusion of the June 22nd Legends Cars of Florida feature race at Auburndale Speedway.

Hey, deja vu... back at Auburndale, again! The #90 Florida Online car was back for its fourth bout of the season with its own "track too tough to tame." Unlike Darlington Speedway (the original track with that label) I don't think I would refer to Auburndale as they do in Darlington's second nickname, the "Lady in Black." Auburndale is more like the "Monster Arrowhead."

In my opinion, the 1/4 mile of semi-banked asphalt track is better described as arrowhead-shaped than oval, yet the shape tends to make things more challenging and exciting. Every corner is different, so you have to make compromises with your car's setup. For example, turns three and four make the top "point" of the arrowhead. It is a fairly sharp turn requiring a lot of braking, hitting your left side tires just next to the rumble strips, and then a holding a low angle during the corner exit. Based on your setup, your car may be handling great through the arrowhead because your setup has balanced all the variables just right. But, to make it all the way around the track, you ARE going to have to round turns one and two eventually... and then again... and again... and again.

In my case for this weekend, that bottom curve of the arrowhead (turns one and two) was definitely my challenge. The car was doing fine everywhere else on the track except there. In practice, I tried everything. I entered early, entered late, apexed at the bottom, apexed in the middle, lots of brake, little brake... I was beginning to get to my wit's end. The car was just not handling coming out of turn two. It was loose, and if I didn't fix it by the heat race, I might be fixing the car instead!

We briefly interrupt this program to give you a weather update:

Saturday, June 22nd, in Auburndale, Florida, easily hit heat indexes in the 100+ range, and humidity that would gag a treefrog. In other words, it was just very hot, very sticky. And, by all means, it was a day to avoid the following at all costs: working in the sun, wearing full-nomex, fireproof, driving suits, shoes, and gloves, squeezing your head into a full-face helmet, and strapping into non-air-conditioned race cars.

Now back to your regularly scheduled race report.

As the heat races approached, it was time for the traditional (and very-much-hated) number draw. Things had actually been looking up in the number drawing category. In Hialeah the week before, I actually drew the #5... and I would have started in the front row for my heat race. Of course, about fifteen minutes later, the skies opened up and torrential rains canceled the entire event.

So maybe the luck of the draw, at least, would be with me for a second week in a row. There were 35 numbers in the bin. Then the draw... yes, you guessed it, I drew #35 in the (still-very-much-hated) number draw.

I started eleventh in my heat. (Just to make that clear, that meant eleventh out of eleven.) But running in the back for the first two laps gave me the opportunity to figure out what was going awry coming out of turn two. I had been, quite simply, accelerating too fast. With the hot and slick track condition, you had to concentrate on making the acceleration down the backstretch as smooth as possible. If you "gunned" it too hard coming out of the turn, the back end would just lose its grip and start coming around.

The feature turned out to be a battle between me and the #3 car of David Tart. Either we had identical setups on our cars or we were making identical movements on the track because we were like synchronized swimmers throughout the entire event. I would be two or three feet off his back bumper for laps on end, trying everything to get a passing opportunity. And when I saw a chance to go for it (for example, he would lose the back end or get high), I would charge for the pass to only find my car mimicking his! I was ready for someone in the stands to raise score cards for each lap: 9.2 for originality, 9.7 for style.

But even with our internal battle ensuing, I managed to advance to tenth position when a caution came out on the 21st lap. (This was one week that I would have liked a 20-lap feature.) The second lap after the green came out again, the #5 car tapped me from behind as we were rounding the bottom of the arrowhead, my favorite place of course! I started to go sideways, but caught it -- allowing the #5 and two other cars to slip underneath me. So, just that quickly, my top ten fell to a 13th... but I guess I'll take it after drawing last, but managing to pull the car out of Auburndale in one piece.

Keep on racing!

Thanks for all your support!

--Trish Koger #90

To send a letter to Trish, email to koger@thunval.com

Check out the Distant Thunder archives for other articles by women drivers.